The old plaquette in La Ciotat (Jac Verheul)Petanque is the latest branch on the enormous tree of jeu de boules. Probably created in 1907 or 1910 in La Ciotat by Jules le Noir (there are several versions of the birth of petanque, but the version of Jules le Noir is the most probable one). The ancestor of petanque was the game jeu provençal (see further on). Ernest Pitiot organised, some weeks after the birth of the new game, the first tournament and founded in 1945 the French Petanque Federation Fédération Française de Petanque et Jeu Provençal (FFPJP). Till then, petanque and jeu provençal (and the games of boule des berges and boule en bois) formed part of the FFB, the Fédération Française de Boules. The FFB was dominated then by the game of boule lyonnaise with almost 130.000 players in 1945 and there were a lot of quarrels between both sections at that time. At the end of 1945 the FFPJP had about 10.000 members. These days the FFPJP counts more than 450.000 members and worldwide there are more than 600.000 licensed petanque players. Petanque is by far the most practised game of bowls on earth, undoubtedly because of the simplicity of its rules.